The Lord Gives and the Lord Takes Away

"The Lord gives and the Lord takes away"

This is one of the those verses that many of us hope to be able to understand or receive clarity on when someone or something is taken from us; but many of us know that "complete understanding" is a place to far off to reach. The hope we have lies in knowing that God is with us no matter what, he permits that things - good and bad - happen to us but He is also there with us to grieve, laugh, cry, smile, scream, etc.

March 30, 2010: between 4:30-9pm someone poisoned the first dog we've had as a couple leading to his death. Snickers was a Doberman who entered our lives when we first arrived in this country. He and his mother were given to us by two missionary woman who also work for SI. Diamond (Snicker's mother) died within the first month we were here, she was very old. We believed however that Snickers would still be with us for another 2-3 years.

I've been asked "why would someone do that?" I'm not entirely sure, though we have our speculations. Taking all the circumstances into consideration we believe it to be the neighbors next door who own the chicken coop. They haven't taken any precautions to keep their chickens from entering our yard, though we have taken every precaution to ensure that our dogs don't get out the yard let alone onto their property. All that to say, their chickens come wandering into our yard all the time, and Snickers - being the protector that he was - would kill the chickens... I know of 4 chickens for sure that he killed. So we think it was them, but we don't have any proof, nor are we liked too.

Please pray for wisdom, that God would give us forgiving hearts and that we would be able to work things out with whoever did it.